


now another bad idea gets through

by Sarah T (SarahT), SarahT



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 10:17:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19788835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarahT/pseuds/Sarah%20T, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarahT/pseuds/SarahT
Summary: On the way to Paris, some private peace negotiations.





	now another bad idea gets through

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the Spike and D. for betaing.
> 
> (Shouldn't be read as in exact continuity with my earlier [half-life](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19445098).)

The impact, when it comes, of Erik’s mind dropping down into his circumstances is so forceful that he involuntarily jerks up and looks around the aircraft, thinking the others must have felt it, too.But no: Charles is asleep on the pull-out couch, Logan in the other chair, Hank busy up front, none of them aware that they’ve just become vividly, glaringly real. _Not a hallucination not a dream not a fantasy_ , he is actually out of his cell and on a plane headed to Paris with Charles to change the future by stopping Mystique from assassinating someone, and no _that_ is absurd, too absurd to believe and everything turns inside-out and unreal again, floating upwards ever so slightly in an imaginary hiccup of gravity.

He squeezes his eyes shut.Metal.There’s metal all around him.Scattered about the cabin, encircling him in the tube of the plane itself.He can feel it and—unlike in his dreams the past few years, when he’s always surrounded by it and yet unable to bring his power to bear—when he tightens a fist, he can actually hear the buckle of the seatbelt crumple.His fingers find the twisted piece and for a moment it steadies him, but when he opens his eyes again, it’s as if he’s looking through a windshield with the wipers going—clear for a second, fogged again instantly by rain—or peering through a microscope zooming up and down in magnification without his intervention.Real/not real, present/not present, free/not free.He throws off the belt, gets up, and staggers back to the bathroom. 

The light comes on when he shuts the door.He puts down the toilet seat, sits on it, and turns the water on.It spills down, glittering, and after a minute he pushes his wrist under the cold stream.The chill steadies him a little.He doesn’t want to look at himself in the mirror—knows he won’t be able to see anything but a ghost, a stranger, an uncanny duplicate—so he puts his cheek down on the sink instead.Chill seeping up his arm, chill against his face.Slightly unpleasant smell of some kind of lemon-based cleaner.Low thrum of the plane’s engine.Vibration of its frame, through his feet and through his power.A pompous brass towel rod on the back of the door. 

He stays where he is.He can hear his breathing begin to quiet.He tries to feel it, too—the slowing rise and fall, the easing of the pounding of his heart, the quick tension-and-release in his throat finding a different rhythm, if he could only occupy himself enough to get in touch with the sensations.A dull ache from the cold begins in his wrist and spreads up the bone.Yes, that’s definitely there.Pain, his old friend, always useful.He concentrates on that, every twinge of discomfort a link to lead him back down into himself.But then the door opens, and he’s floating away again.

Charles, bracing himself in the doorway, still more than half drunk, lank hair spilling over his eyes as he squints at Erik.

“Erik, you’ve been back here half an hour.What are you doing, _wanking_?“

The automatic mode of reaction that’s been carrying him all day takes over.“Ever heard of knocking, Charles?”

His voice sounds almost plaintive in his ears.Charles frowns.“’S my plane.”

“Well, now you know that I am, in fact, using the facilities, so if you wouldn’t—“

Charles steps in further, eyes narrowing, visibly sobering a little as he observes the odd position Erik is in.“Yes.Using them to induce physical discomfort, trying to bring down an obviously elevated heart and respiratory rate.Not battling a spot of dissociation, are you, Erik?” 

Erik’s momentarily at a loss to decide whether it’s even worth trying to deny it, especially if Charles can see it without his powers.Though really he was doing fine before. Being mostly convinced that none of it was real had gotten him through the escape with nothing more than mild bemusement.Even what he’d said to Charles afterwards—those were things he’d said in his head a thousand times before, he might as well say them again. 

It’s the coming out of it that’s proving to be a nightmare.

“Because, if you are…”Charles pulls the door shut behind him without looking, bringing him suddenly very close.“I can think of something that works for that.”

Erik sits up.He would never have thought that, when ( _if_ ) they met again, Charles would look like this.Until today, he hasn’t seen anyone out of uniform in several years, but fashion surely can’t explain the stringy hair, the half-hearted beard, the sallow skin.And he’s lost that softness, the curve of cheek that used to betray his American innocence no matter how sophisticated he’d tried to sound.Most troubling of all, though, is the glittering malice in his eyes. 

He realizes, suddenly, what Charles has said, and feels a sideways lurch in his stomach.

“Charles, you’re still drunk.”

“Yes.”He nods.“Yes, I am.I’m drunk and you’re dissociating.Sounds dangerous, Erik. _Very_ dangerous.”

Erik is certainly aware of his breath now, rough and rasping.He ought to say…something. _Yes.No.Charles, this is a bad idea and at least one of us is going to end up hurt._ All the words collide in his throat.Charles is peering down at him, watching for some kind of reaction.When he doesn’t speak, Charles grasps the back of his neck and kisses him.

That’s more of a shock than the water had been, sending a much more pleasant current through him. Charles’s mouth is warm, his breath heavy with liquor, his hands trembling slightly.He reflexively starts to respond, reaching up for Charles, but Charles pushes him back.

“ _That’s_ real, Erik,” he lectures.“So is this.”He slides a hand down Erik’s side and pulls his shirt out of his pants.“And this.”

He slips his hand inside, caresses the skin of his stomach so that Erik shivers.But he’s not sure he wants it like this, with Charles’s face hard and predatory.Maybe it’s only fair, for what he did to Charles.Maybe this is the answer Charles couldn’t give earlier to his apology, an anger and a bitterness that Erik had brought about himself.Maybe if he lets Charles do this, he’ll feel they’re even.That he’s regained his dignity.

But Erik doesn’t _like_ it this way and the more he doesn’t like it, the more he can feel himself slipping away.Charles’s hand has slid forward and down, and _yes_ Erik is starting to get hard, but he’s also staring at one of the buttons on Charles’s shirt as if he’d never seen one before, and it can’t be like this.It can’t.

With his power, he pushes Charles backwards hard against the door, knocking the wind out of him.He’s up and crowding against him the same instant, pinning his arms.“How about this, Charles?” he snarls, and everything in him, anger, regret, desire, flares at being so close. 

Charles is getting hard, too, Erik can feel it.Even this strange Charles still wants him, and that may be the most absurd thing yet.Charles is panting, but he still summons a devilish smile.“Oh, yes,” he breathes.

Erik kisses him, direct and open-mouthed.Then they’re frantically pulling at each other’s clothes.Erik’s hands are clumsy with the buttons—he hasn’t touched a button in ten years, hasn’t felt another person close like this in ten years, hands everywhere, body pressed deliciously, maddeningly against his, it’s all too much at once and he’s still operating on some kind of tape delay inside his own head. _Too much,_ and he just yanks Charles’s belt-buckle with his power, popping it off entirely.But Charles has the advantage and gets his hand down Erik’s pants first.

 _Knees buckle, lights flicker, plane dropping with him_ and he only just catches himself with a hand braced on the door.Charles grabs at him with one hand, letting go with the other, which at least allows Erik to steady himself and the plane, his brain to clear a little. 

“Second time you’ve lost control of your powers today, Erik,” Charles says.“You never do that.Keep it up and you’ll have me thinking you care.”

He says it mockingly, but there’s a hint of uncertainty in those dazzling blue eyes, so close he could count every eyelash.As if Erik could just turn it off when he wanted to.If only he could.He would’ve done it before they’d even gone to Cuba.But Charles doesn’t know.He’s not in Erik’s head anymore and he’s been reduced to guessing like any other person and he doesn’t know. _You abandoned me._

As if Erik ever _would_.It’s infuriating.“Don’t flatter yourself, Charles.I haven’t had a moment’s privacy in ten years.”

Charles blinks away whatever hesitation had been there.“Then I suppose I have a certain responsibility to make you come very hard indeed.Do try not to crash the plane this time.”

Erik swallows.It’s always turned him on to hear Charles talk like that, refined voice pronouncing filthy things, and Charles knows it.He takes him in hand again, pulling him free, and Erik stifles a little cry in his throat.He shuts his eyes and leans forward, resting his forehead on his fist.With each sweet stroke of Charles’s hand, he feels pulled down and down, an undertow of sensation he fights for the pleasure of feeling it dragging at him. 

“You’re here, Erik,” Charles murmurs, low and relentless.“Right here with me.You’re not going anywhere now.”

But he’s forcing it over uneven breathing, and Erik realizes that Charles, confident as he sounds, can’t simply read what effect he’s having, the way he used to.He wonders if that means Charles doesn’t feel responsible for it anymore either, an idea that sends another thrill through him.How far would Charles go, if he could, if Erik pushed him hard enough—

“Promises, promises,” Erik gasps.

“Is that so?”

Charles flicks his thumb against the tip of Erik’s cock, just enough to sting.Erik gasps.

He’s not going to last—and then he’s not going to last.He grimaces, sinks his teeth into his fist, and comes.The plunge is obliterating.When it passes, it’s like he’s been left behind on a beach by the tide going out. _Here I am.Here._ He takes a deep breath, feeling it going into his lungs.His heart is still pounding in his chest.His heart.He’s crowding Charles up against a wall in an airplane bathroom.Charles’s hair is tickling his nose.

He takes a step back and wipes his forehead.Charles is watching him with eyebrows raised.It’s meant to be cocky, but when Erik meets his eyes, his gaze falters just a little, turns more defiant.He’d never been like that before, not even after their very first time.“Well?” Charles prompts.

He could turn and walk out, leave Charles there like that, a mess, turned on and frustrated.The idea does have some appeal.But he’s lying to himself that it’s even possible.

“Well,” he says and raises his hand to pull apart the towel rod and reshape it to restrain Charles’s waist and wrists.“I didn’t crash the plane.But I think there’s some other damage I’d like to do.”

Charles pulls automatically against the bars, a flash of alarm vanishing into smugness as Erik steps close again, reaching for him.“What do you think is even left for you to do to me, Erik…?”

“You don’t think I gave that any consideration, all those years inside?”

“I haven’t seen much evidence of it.”

“You can’t,” Erik says conversationally, “see into my mind anymore.”He finishes undoing Charles’s pants.“So you don’t know what I might do.What sort of man you took out of that prison.”

“I don’t think I even knew what kind of man you were before,” Charles says, and it’s supposed to be another taunt, but his smile is suddenly crumbling and his eyes moist.“I thought I did, but—“

Erik doesn’t want to look at him any more, so he drops to his knees and takes him into his mouth.

He’s never really cared for the taste, the smell, but the shudder and groan above him are exquisite.So is the feeling of Charles’s wrists yanking uselessly against the metal, counterpoint to the hot pulse on his tongue.Even now, wanting to control Erik; he presses the metal down just a little harder. 

“Fuck.Erik.Fuck.”Charles is banging his head against the door, chanting.It’s probably better that they can’t really talk, like this.Erik has always been plain-spoken, but, somehow, once he met Charles, even his most direct statements weren’t adequate to capture what he meant anymore.He’d told Charles who he was.Over and over.Charles had refused to believe it until it was too late for all of them. 

He’d told Charles how he felt, too, or he’d tried—it had felt like learning English had, sounding out strange words with unclear meanings—but obviously that had been a failure, too.Better like this, with Charles reduced to repeating his name in a different tone each time, from a curse to a desperate plea, and him trying to convey nothing more complicated than _I want you, I’ve wanted you all this time_.

All he has to do is kneel in this little room and work Charles up over and over until at last he gets him over the crest, savoring the convulsive movements in the thighs under his hands.For a minute, there’s no sound but Charles’s gasps.Erik finds the tissue dispenser, releases Charles with a casual wave of his hand while he deals with it.Charles slides down against the wall, so that they’re knee to knee.

Now that he’s no longer cocooned by the haze of indifference that’s closed him in so long, certain thoughts stand out unpleasantly.Ten years—ten years of his life simply gone.Comrades dead, Mystique in the wind.This Trask, hunting them like animals, the government looking the other way, while he lay in a prison cell.Stupid.Wasteful.Almost unbearable.

Charles clears his throat.Erik looks back at him.He’s gazing at him, watchful.Erik remembers his odd courtliness after sex—the inexplicable way he always used to _thank_ Erik, as if Erik had given him something very precious.Charles, like this now, guarded and broken, and it could have been even worse.

“You shouldn’t have come for me without your powers,” he says.

Charles half-laughs, surprised.“Thank you, I think.”

“I’m serious.It was foolish.If they had caught you, you never would’ve seen the outside world again.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“They used to ask me about you all the time,” he says abruptly.“At first I couldn’t understand why they didn’t already _know_ , but I wouldn’t tell them anyway.Then I realized that you must have done some major editing on your way out of the CIA.They never stopped asking, Charles—”

“Wait,” Charles breaks in, leaning forward.“Did they torture you?”

There’s _surprise_ in his voice, actual surprise.Erik has to choke back his own bitter laugh, turns it into a wry smile.“No more than you would imagine.”

“I didn’t imagine any at all!” 

“Well, your imagination has always been limited when it might have been inconvenient.” 

“Let me see.”

He can tell that it’s not that Charles doesn’t believe him, it’s that he still, automatically, presumes their intimacy.But he can’t make it true anymore.Erik shakes his head.“They were careful not to leave visible marks.Might’ve been awkward to have to explain later.”

“Erik,” Charles says urgently, “I swear to you, I had no idea.If I had known—“

That’s more than Erik can take.“Don’t,” he says, holding up a hand.“Don’t say it when we both know it’s not true.”

“Don’t say…what?”

“You wouldn’t have come for me, even if you’d known.I would have come for you, but you would’ve left me there, in the hands of the government, where I ‘belonged.’That’s the difference between me and you, Charles.”

He says it simply, without emotion, but Charles flushes.“I think there are a few more meaningful ones.”

Not even a token denial.“Still worried about killing people.”

“Murdering them, yes.You may not have killed Kennedy, but—“

“Yes, I’ve killed people, when it was necessary.”He narrows his eyes.“So has Mystique, so I sincerely hope that’s not the approach you plan to take to her tomorrow.”

Charles blinks like he’s been hit over the head.Erik could shake him.Ten years, all that superficial bitterness and despair, and still, _still_ clinging to his innocence.What gives him the right?“She has?Raven has?”

“What do you think we were doing all that time?Playing tiddlywinks?”

“No, I…”He looks off into space, genuinely distressed.Erik now wishes he had never said anything at all.But since they’re talking about it, he’ll take the chance to make the point.

“It wasn’t casual and it wasn’t for fun, Charles, but it happened, so if you could just _for once in your life_ recognize that not every problem can be solved by kind words and good intentions…”

“I know that,” Charles whispers, turning his head to look at him directly.“Don’t you think I know that?”

A silence hangs between them.In the quiet, Erik hears the engines change pitch as the attitude of the plane drops.They must be beginning descent. 

Charles finally rubs at his cheek and says, “We’ll be in Paris shortly.I have to talk to Hank.”He levers himself to his feet. 

“Change your shirt first,” Erik says, automatically.

He nods.“Better fix the…”He waves at the twisted remnants of the towel rod.

Erik busies himself with doing that while Charles steps over him and out.

The water’s been running all this time.Erik rinses out his mouth, splashes his face, and, this time, looks at himself in the mirror.It looks like him.Gaunter, tireder, a little less hair, but him. _Not a hallucination not a dream not a fantasy._ Real, for whatever that’s worth.

Not a rapprochement, either.Just a pause, and now it starts again.

He straightens his clothes and opens the door.


End file.
